


Heroes with Disabilities

by QuarterClever



Category: The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Character with Disabilities, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 03:45:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuarterClever/pseuds/QuarterClever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For career day in kindergarten, Billy tells his dad he wants to be Captain America.</p><p>It shouldn’t be a surprise, it shouldn’t, but it shocks him all the same. Steve thought these conversations, the hard ones, the ones where you don’t know what to say to your son, were supposed to come later, with tears and fights and teenagers. Not when a bright-faced kindergartener is swinging back and forth on his forearm crutches like they’re gym bars and he’s about to flip in both senses of the word because he’s so excited. Because he thinks he’s going to grow up to be just like his dad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heroes with Disabilities

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr and written in response to another post there (see end notes)
> 
> All my experiences with the issues addressed in this drabble have been second hand, so please don't think I'm trying to speak for anyone or say that I know what an experience is like, because I don't. If you feel I've misrepresented something or anything like that, please let me know in a review.

When Steve first holds Billy, he stops breathing. He _can’t_ breathe, like he’s having an asthma attack. And for all he knows that it’s not the asthma, can’t be, not since the super soldier serum, he finds himself wanting to ask for one of those fancy inhalers they’ve got now. But his mouth won’t move at all, and his eyes can’t move anywhere but Billy’s face, his tiny hands, the little tufts of blond hair. He’s so small, so breakable, and for all that he’s told himself he’ll protect his son, how can he do that when his strength could just as easily break him as keep him safe?

Billy doesn’t think about any of that. He just blinks up at Steve—at his father—and yawns and closes his eyes and goes to sleep.

“Cute,” Tony comments in that too-loud voice of his. “Bet he’ll grow up to be a hero just like his dad.”

“No.” Steve can’t keep the awe out of his voice but then he wasn’t really trying anyway. “He’ll be better.”

“He’ll definitely have better fashion sense. Uncle Tony’s not going to let him wear anything with stars and stripes, baby Cap or no.”

*

Billy’s favorite t-shirt is from Old Navy. It’s red with the American flag, and if Steve let him Billy would wear it every day. He says it matches the blue and white and red stars on his AFOs.

Tony promises to make better ones, of course, but Billy likes the ones he has. And the problem isn’t that Billy’s lacking spinning rims or rocket boosters, it’s that he needs them at all. In a world that’s gone from B-17s to _actual_ flying fortresses, from rotary to smart phones, it’s infuriating that the only difference between Steve and Billy is whether or not their braces are made of leather and metal or plastic and velcro.

*

For career day in kindergarten, Billy tells his dad he wants to be Captain America.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, it shouldn’t, but it shocks him all the same. Steve thought these conversations, the hard ones, the ones where you don’t know what to say to your son, were supposed to come later, with tears and fights and teenagers. Not when a bright-faced kindergartener is swinging back and forth on his forearm crutches like they’re gym bars and he’s about to flip in both senses of the word because he’s so excited. Because he thinks he’s going to grow up to be just like his dad.

Only that’s impossible, Steve knows it, but he still finds himself wishing that there was some way to bring back the super soldier serum so that he doesn’t have to see that shine fade from Billy’s face when he grows up and realizes that his file will always be stamped 4-F.

*

In middle school Billy comes home with tear tracks down his face but a light in his eyes that shows he’s furious.

“They said I’m not your son. That I’m just some lame cripple and there’s no way I could have a cool hero like Captain America as my dad.”

And Steve sits him down and explains, like he’s never been able to bring himself to before, about his own asthma and leg braces and bullies. About how Billy’s his son, no matter what anyone says.

Billy just looks at him, so solemn and small, and Steve doesn’t know what he was hoping to see in his son’s face, but he doesn’t think it was this stubborn refusal.

“I am Steve Roger’s son. But I’m Captain America’s son, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Me writing something like this has been building up for a long time, because I have a lot of feelings about superheroes and disabilities. It’s not that people are trying to be mean or anything it’s just that sometimes I feel like, for all the talk about Oracle and Daredevil and all, no one really thinks a superhero can be anything but, well, what people tend to think of when they think of superheroes. And I can’t really articulate this well, as much as I’d like to, and I’m probably not the right person to do it anyway because I don’t have the experience of a major or lifelong disability or anything and I can’t use the right vocabulary or make the argument that I’m representing a group I belong to, but… I still have all these feelings.
> 
> Anyway, a little bit ago a [lovely piece of fanart](http://siffy.tumblr.com/post/25905521541) accompanied by a small explanation popped up on my tumblr dash. And it’s lovely and moving, but something about it bothered me. I don’t think it was the OP’s intent at all but something in the phrasing “his son can’t grow up to be like him” just strikes me as so wrong. Because of course his son can be a hero, can be just like Captain America. Because Captain America was a hero even when he was just little Steve Rogers, with asthma and braces and a thousand other health problems.
> 
> So I decided to write fic to deal with all these feels. I’m not very well-versed in any Marvel or Avengers canon, so people are probably horribly OOC, but I thought it would be interesting if Steve doesn’t think his son can grow up to be like him because, despite everything, he only considers himself a hero when he’s Captain America. He doesn’t think of Steve Rogers as a hero, because Steve Rogers is weak and sick. And even if he knows intellectually that’s not true, it’s still what he feels and what he acts on. So when he has a son who is born with all the same medical conditions that he had as a kid, he can’t see that kid as a hero because that’s not what a hero is. He feels like he failed his son, but the kid’s not having any of it. Because he knows that his dad, the person, is a hero, and that’s who he wants to be, even if it doesn’t mean punching Nazis in the face.
> 
> Also, as a side note, they totally make AFOs (which are ankle-foot orthotics and are basically moulded plastic braces that can have any kind of designs on them) with Spiderman on them.


End file.
